AP - Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.

Reuters - U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan warned on Monday that a small Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks could endanger the lives of American troops.

AP - Searchers on Monday pulled five more bodies from a mud-covered highway where back-to-back landslides buried bus passengers and people trying to save them. Yet more mudslides raise Guatemala's official death toll to 45 after days of torrential rains.

AP - Egypt's leading democracy advocate made a forceful call Monday for the nation to boycott November's parliamentary election, saying they were certain to be rigged and urging his young supporters to be patient and plan for a lengthy struggle.

AP - Soldiers opened fire on a family's car at a military checkpoint in northern Mexico, killing a 15-year-old boy and his father, authorities and relatives said Monday.

Reuters - President Barack Obama, scrambling to jump-start job creation in a sluggish economy, proposed a six-year plan on Monday to rebuild aging roads, railways and runways with an initial $50 billion investment.

Reuters - Australia's agonizing wait for a new government is expected to finally end on Tuesday, with independent lawmakers holding the balance of power in parliament due to decide their allegiances later in the day.

AP - Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas distributed sandbags and warned of flash floods as Tropical Storm Hermine strengthened and headed toward the northwestern Gulf coast on Monday.

AFP - Steven Gerrard admits being captain of England right now feels like a man under siege as he prepares to lead his team into a UEFA Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland here on Tuesday desperately trying to keep the focus on football.

AFP - US President Barack Obama Monday promised more than 50 billion dollars to create jobs rebuilding roads, railways and airports, targeting huge unemployment and ripping resurgent Republicans.

AFP - Suspected members of an Islamist sect that launched an uprising last year have killed a retired police officer and wounded five other people, the latest of such attacks in Nigeria's north, police said Monday.

AP - The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

AP - A Taliban suicide bomber detonated a car in an alley behind a police station in a strategically important town in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 17 police and civilians in an explosion that shattered the station and neighboring homes.

AP - The Justice Department won't say if the blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from gushing from BP's undersea well into the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to shore.

AP - Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas distributed sandbags and warned of flash floods as Tropical Storm Hermine headed toward the northwestern Gulf coast on Monday.

AP - As New York Indian Nation leaders battle in courtrooms to preserve their tax-free cigarette market, tensions are rising on reservations, where the state's renewed efforts to tax sales to non-Native customers is viewed as yet another attack on Native American rights.

AP - Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

AP - Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.

AP - More than 80 years ago, Germany sold tens of thousands of bonds to American investors in an effort to recover financially from World War I. Later, Adolf Hitler used some of the money raised by those bonds to build the powerful Nazi war machine that would ravage Europe during World War II.

AFP - Global stock markets rose and the dollar fell on Monday as investors further digested better-than-expected US jobs data which reduced prospects of a return to recession.

AFP - US President Barack Obama will travel to the Midwestern US state of Wisconsin Monday as part of a broad effort to stem ebbing political support over the slowing economic recovery.

AP - The USS Olympia, a one-of-a-kind steel cruiser that returned home to a hero's welcome after a history-changing victory in the Spanish-American War, is a proud veteran fighting what may be its final battle.

AP - The Black Widow of eating contests gobbled up nearly 181 chicken wings in 12 minutes, devouring the national championship record in Buffalo on Sunday.

AP - Oil prices slipped to near $74 a barrel Monday in Asia as traders weighed whether growing Chinese demand can offset weak U.S. fuel consumption amid high unemployment.

Reuters - Aftershocks rocked New Zealand's second-biggest city on Monday causing further damage and forcing authorities to extend a state of emergency after the country's most damaging earthquake in 80 years.

AFP - President Barack Obama will call for a 100-billion-dollar business tax credit this week to boost the sagging US economic recovery, The Washington Post reported.